President Donald Trump's whirlwind first few days in office have hit America with a “shock and awe” campaign that has startling similarities to George W. Bush’s policies in Iraq, a New York Times columnist wrote Tuesday.
After vastly dismantling the nation’s government, Bush put in place “right-wing apparatchiks, some barely out of college” — and left the nation a destabilized mess, wrote Michelle Goldberg.
Trump, with the help of Elon Musk, is threatening to repeat history — but this time at home, she wrote.
“The first days of the second Trump term have a distinct Coalition Provisional Authority vibe,” her article stated.
“For those lucky enough not to remember, the Coalition Provisional Authority was the administration that George W. Bush and his team put in place after charging heedlessly into Iraq, convinced that it would be easy to remake a government about which they knew next to nothing.
“It was full of right-wing apparatchiks, some barely out of college, who were given enormous responsibilities. Six people initially hired for low-level administrative jobs after sending their résumés to the conservative Heritage Foundation were assigned to manage Iraq’s $13 billion budget. A social worker who’d served as director at a Christian charity was put in charge of rebuilding the health care system.
“Meanwhile, 50,000 to 100,000 Iraqi government workers, many of whom had joined the Baath Party only to get their jobs in the first place, were fired.”
Fast forward more than 20 years, and the same is being done in America, she wrote.
“The United States government, of course, has yet to be dismantled to the same extent as Iraq’s, though not for lack of trying. During the transition, Trump’s allies used the phrase “shock and awe” — another throwback to the Iraq war — to describe his plans for the first 100 days,” she went on.
“Soon after taking over, they created a crisis by shutting down huge segments of federal government spending, though they restarted at least some payments after a judge slapped them with a court order. Late Friday, Elon Musk seized control of the Treasury Department’s payment system, which disburses trillions of dollars and houses sensitive data about millions of Americans. Some of the people helping him take over the government — who include, as Wired reported, a half dozen engineers between the ages of 19 and 24 — appear to be even less experienced than the neophytes who staffed the C.P.A. in Iraq.”
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Elsewhere, swathes of workers have been put on leave while their departments are investigated for being central to diversity initiatives or for being too progressive. The FBI has been routed in apparently retaliation for its criminal investigations into Trump.
“It’s as if we’ve come full circle,” wrote Goldberg.
“America’s war in Iraq, in addition to killing hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and destabilizing the Middle East, also set the stage for Trump’s rise by fostering a widespread sense of distrust and betrayal in the United States. Trump, in turn, is imposing on us a milder version of the careless, unaccountable governance we installed there.
“... Eventually, the destruction wrought by this new regime will be undeniable, even to some of its supporters. But breaking a country, unfortunately, is a lot easier than putting it back together.”
